#RPGaDay2024 - 17 - An engaging RPG community

This year's RPGaDay (full text list here)

Q. An engaging RPG community?

A. Dice.Camp on Mastodon.

There are three RPG related communities that I’m currently involved with; two virtual and one very much face-to-face. Two of them I’m involved with organising, so I am a little biased. However, in both those cases I became involved in organising them as I’m invested in them and they wanted help.

First up is the Garricon community, the people who attend to run and play roleplaying games at the Garrison Hotel in Sheffield. This all started nearly 19 years ago with the first Furnace (named after the steel making industry which dominated Sheffield), and reader, I was there. The idea was a very focussed convention that was ‘all about the games’. There were no seminars or other such frippery (joking, I’ve enjoyed such at Continuum in the past) as the initial organisers wanted a laser focus on gameplay. It proved popular and, although the format has evolved slightly on feedback, the convention remains essentially the same. Every October, somewhere between 65 and 75 gamers descend on a former military gaol-house for a weekend of fun. I joined the committee about five years in, when most of the original organisers left, with only Graham Spearing remaining from the original committee. Since then, we’ve added in Revelation (a Powered-by-the-Apocalypse and Forged-in-the-Dark focused con in February) and North Star (an SF RPG focused con) but Furnace remains the jewel in the crown. Seven Hills runs along as a cousin with different organisers. We do have a core of attendees that go to all the cons, but it’s nice to meet the slightly different groups that attend for the different flavours that float their boat.

Next up is the Gaming Tavern, an online forum set up by Tom Zunder. This is an old-style bulletin board, mainly populated by UK gamers (but open to all). What I like about it is that mostly it avoids fractious engagements and people are pleasant, thoughtful and engaging. Speaking as an admin, we have had the occasional clash, but we’ve done our best to manage it. It’s reasonably low traffic; add that to friendly, and it’s a nice place to hangout. Again, I’m an admin as Tom wanted some support.

The final community I really value is the Mastodon gaming community which I’ve come to know through the Dice Camp server. I found Twitter an echo chamber and abandoned it eighteen months ago when they killed off Twitteriffic, and have since found a much more engaging social media group to be involved in. It’s nice to get the friendly engagement and discussions that I see there. It’s also interesting that posts and blog entries shared there get far more engagement than those on Twitter or Facebook (even though in theory I had more followers on both platforms). It took adjusting to (for example, the need to use hashtags to make search and engagement work) but I like it and the open source ethos. Some of my friends have gone to Bluesky, but even though I have an account there I’ve not found a compelling reason to invest time there. 

So which to choose? 

I think I’m going to go with Dice Camp and Mastodon because that’s something that’s been a big change for me over the last 18 months; the others have been constants over the last two decades.

17 August 2024 

PS I don’t mention BITS Traveller, as that’s mostly been on hold since the pandemic. However, that’s about to change.